“We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.” —George Washington

Friday, March 12, 2010

Devoured by Debt

Investor's Business Daily has a great piece this morning...midway through is this chart:

This is really a sequel to what I wrote about in yesterday's post, "We Can't Afford It!"

From the IBD article:

Just last year, U.S. public debt totaled $7.5 trillion — a sum equal to all the indebtedness accumulated from our 225 years in existence as a nation. But by 2020, total U.S. public debt will be $20.3 trillion — an increase of 171% in just 10 years.

By itself, such a sum wouldn't matter. But it's the weight it will place on the economy that's important. Last year, debt as a share of GDP — the recognized measure for how indebted a country is — stood at 53%. By 2020, it will be over 90%.

And that's not including the hundreds of billions of debts run up by Social Security and Medicare, which, technically, the government says it "owes to itself."